Friday, 14 November 2014

On Sunday, November 16th at 1600 hrs at the National Archives in Ottawa the European Union Film Festival continues with a screening of the Luxembourg documentary about the Brothers Schleck, who have carried the nation's banner in pro racing for the last few years. Although Frank continues to race, Andy announced his retirement from racing last month at the age of 29 as he has not been able to fully recover from injuries sustained over the last few years. A brilliant prospect once and the official winner of the 2010 Tour de France after Alberto Contador's disqualification, Andy always seemed fragile and his palmares were never what they might have been. Lots of second places (twice at the Tour de France, once at the Giro) but never quite the complete rider somehow.

The big stars of cycling: the race
winners stand on the podium on the inevitable three steps, waving to
the crowds, kissing podium girls, throwing bouquets around and
spraying innocent bystanders with champagne. But the riders on the
podium are only the most visible evidence of a pro team and now a
book has come out that shines a bit of light on those that never end
up mentioned, unless a chain breaks at a bad moment: the mechanics.

Guy Andrews' and Rohan Dubash's new
book, “Bike Mechanic: Tales from the Road and the Workshop” is a
welcome addition to the cycling library if only because it offers an
unusual point of view. Well, it is also praiseworthy for the really
good photographs, most effective in classic black-and-white, by Taz
Darling. There are masses of books about celebrity racers and an
impressive number that deal with famous bicycle brands or artisanal
builders but nobody has had much to say about bicycle mechanics
before. This book goes some way to addressing this gap but it might
be better to consider it as a book about the management of the
mechanical aspect of cycling. The structure of the book is unusual,
with the opening section, “On the Road,” dealing with pro racing
while the second section (“Hardware”) and the last (“the Bike”)
move away from this to a nuts-and-bolts discussion (literally) of
bicycle maintenance.

The first section, which makes up less
than one-third of the book, includes excellent race photos as well as
short accounts of life as a pro race mechanic. This is enjoyable and
illuminating. We know that the racer gets the credit when the race
is won but when the race is lost through a technical failure the
opprobrium attaches to the previously-ignored mechanic. The book
mentions two specific cases, both involving chains: David Millar's
coming apart as he was about to commence what should have been a
stage-winning sprint at the Vuelta; the 2010 Tour de France when Andy
Schleck's jammed at a critical moment.

We learn that in the Good Old Days
racers usually had only one bicycle and mechanics were freelancers
who showed up at races. Today's mechanics are faced with pro teams
that have upwards of 200 bicycles plus masses of spares to account
for. Each racing bicycle is built to the idiosyncrasies of picky
pros and the mechanics need to stay abreast of this. Then during the
race itself the mechanics are either moving the big truck to the next
stage location or sitting in a team car, preparing to leap out for a
quick wheel change or on-the-fly adjustment. When the racing is done
each day and the riders off for their massages, the mechanics are
busy washing, lubricating and adjusting the thoroughbred machines in
time for it all to be repeated the next day during a typical stage
race.

The authors have included interesting
snippets of interview with mechanics, some background on the arrival
of Shimano components on the European pro racing scene, an
examination of a typical UCI World Tour team service course (in this
case the Omega-Pharma-Quick-Step one)--laconically described as the
“team garage;” a vivid description of riding along with the
neutral support mechanics of Mavic and Vittoria. There is an account
of the huge team trucks and their valuable contents and a chapter on
bike washing. For those who have not seen pro race mechanics in
action after a race it is worth staying around for the show. This
writer recalls seeing the mechanics at the HEW Cyclassics race in
Hamburg hosing down expensive racing bicycles at top speed and
stacking them in team station wagons as if they were firewood.

The second section of the book moves us
into the esoteric world of the bicycle workshop, with its range of
specific-purpose tools. The photographs are the highlight of this
section and even those with no mechanical aptitude will feel
motivated to at least consider doing some work if one could only get
one's hands on these beautiful items. Even tools that most of us
will never use (head tube facing tools, anyone?) look irresistible
here.

The last section of the book covers the
complete bicycle and provides advice on how to maintain your
mechanical steed in the same way that pros do. There are
explanations and suggestions for everything from tire installation to
cleaning in a clearly-written and well-illustrated fashion. However,
this book is not to be confused with manuals with exploded assembly
diagrams (thinking of Leonard Zinn's here) and for really specific instructions
you need to go elsewhere.

So the book is a bit of this and a bit
of that—and I would have loved more “Tales from the Road”--
rather than a comprehensive look at the experiences of bike mechanics
or a how-two book for those aspiring to be one. But the modest goal
set by the author is easily reached:

So this book is
a collection of stories with some tips and hints that we thought be
useful to amateur mechanics and road cycling enthusiasts alike. It
certainly isn't comprehensive; there just wasn't space.....We hope it
inspires you to get the workstand out.

The book is a joint venture between
VeloPress and Rouleur so as always the publication is of very high
quality and many of the photos approach art. With the cycling season
coming to an end for many of us, this is an excellent read for dark
winter evenings, fun to just browse through, and would be a fine gift
for any cyclist, even one with or without a workstand.

“Bicycle Mechanic—Tales from the
Road and the Workshop” by Guy Andrews and Rohan Dubash,

Sunday, 9 November 2014

In all honesty, I will admit to no inclination towards mountain bikes. I am all about
skinny tires, classic road races, white ankle socks and total
Euro-style. So when the folks at VeloPress, who put out some of my
favourite road cycling biography/history/training/ books pressed one
of their latest publications into my hands I was not sure what to
do with it. And that's because “Fat Tire Flyer” by Charlie Kelly
is about the birth and early years of the mountain bike. Bikes with
fat tires. Bikes ridden by long-haired freaks in California in the
1970s. Bikes that--shudder--even got really dirty. And this account
is one of the most entertaining books I have had this year.

There are very few inventions where one
can say there was a clear and definite beginning. Germans will tell
you Philipp Reis invented the telephone, not Alexander Graham Bell;
the French will say that Clement Ader's airplane was the first in
powered flight, not the Wright Brothers'. The birth of the mountain
bike (unfortunately described as “one of the most significant
inventions in the 20th Century” on the book's inside
cover) brooks no such foggy origin. We have all heard about the
Repack Race on Mount Tamalpais in Northern California and the names
associated with the “klunker bikes” still resonate in the bicycle
industry nearly four decades later. These names include Tom Ritchey,
Gary Fisher, Joe Breeze and the author of “Fat Tire Flyer,”
Charlie Kelly.

Charlie Kelly is a man who has worn
many hats in his life and the book opens with an account of how he
got into cycling. In his very amusing and wry style he recounts the
junk bikes he rode as a child, moving up eventually to one of the
great bike boom-era road bikes, a Peugeot U0-8, described as the kind
of bike people who don't own bikes would recommend. Now into riding
more seriously but still clearly knowing not much he upgraded to
another Peugeot, a PX-10 (a very collectible bike in today's market)
before meeting up for the first time with like-minded spirits in the
form of Gary Fisher and the drummer of the New Riders of the Purple
Sage band. Kelly had become a roadie for a band himself and the
group he associated with, musicians and cyclists, were long-haired
free spirits.

Deciding that he wanted to race, he
realized that it was necessary to belong to a club and since they
thought of themselves as not suitable for the only bike club in the
vicinity they ended up forming their own, rather anarchic group, the
Velo-Club Tamalpais. To manage VTC, Kelly went to the public library
and after mastering “The Clubwoman's Handbook” was able to
establish some rules of order and determine enough of a statement of
purpose that VTC was accredited and on its way.

The group's racing history did not
sound particularly distinguished and Charlie Kelly's own palmares
never reached more than a second place after he blew a lead. But the
story really gets interesting when he and his friends determined that
riding skinny-tired 10-speeds for errands and transportation was not
very practical so they picked up old heavy singlespeed bikes to ride
to club meetings and for other purposes. One day they visited a
friend on Mount Tamalpais in Marin County and using their heavy old
bikes rode around on the local trails, discovering, to their apparent
surprise, that going downhill was much easier than uphill. Soon a
course was determined, the Pine Mountain Loop, and more people joined
in.

A particular section of dirt fire road
behind Cascade Canyon became the site of the now-legendary Repack.
The bikes used were never meant to handle the kind of abuse the
VTCers aimed at them and the coaster brakes would smoke as the grease
burned out, necessitating frequent repacking and hence the name.
Charlie Kelly took on the task of organizing the Repack races and
arranging for time- and record-keeping. As time passed the group
made more and more modifications to their old bicycles but 40 year
old bikes and parts gradually disappeared and as they become more and
more modified the direction was clear. The Marin Klunker Bike, made
of bits and pieces found in thrift shops and basements, metamorphosed
into the first purpose-built off-road mountain bike with new parts,
one of a small series constructed by Joe Breeze in 1977. The rest is
history.

Ritchey Mountain Bike No. 1

Charlie Kelly was not only the
organizer of the Repack races but he went into a partnership with
Gary Fisher to build and sell the new style bikes, with frames
constructed by Tom Ritchey, and actually used the name MountainBike
for the product. The growth of the racing scene, the MountainBike
story, the establishment in 1983 of NORBA (National Off-Road Bicycle
Association) and Charlie Kelly's mountain bike publication, “the
Fat Tire Flyer,” is covered in the book, with many period
photographs and groovy counter-culture graphics.

There is much in the book that is
counter-culture and one has the sense of a group of Californians who
refused to grow up, semi-employed in their 30s and hanging around
with bands like the Grateful Dead, having a great time crashing
their bikes down Repack, while wearing what looked like construction
worker gear. It was a world far distant from European-style road
racing and in fact the Union Cycliste International (UCI) did not
even deign to recognize the sport until 1990. In the meantime
mountain biking has become a global sport, its manufacture a global
industry. The bikes, with their fat tires, flat handlebars and
friendly appearance, have brought many people into cycling who might
never have considered it.

Charlie Kelly wrote for Bicycling
magazine for a while—well, until he got fired—and other cycling
publications and the book includes some excellent samples of his
writing. There is even a chapter about his trip to the 1985 Giro
d'Italia, far from the fire roads of Marin County, where he saw some
of the greats of European road racing, including Francesco Moser,
perform before the world. And in a life characterized perhaps by the
unexpected after “the Fat Tire Flyer” ceased publication he
turned his hand to a completely different line of work, that of piano
mover, for three decades.

Considering the makeshift nature of the
original “klunker” project, VeloPress has produced a very fine
volume, with good photo reproduction, worthy of any cycling library
shelf. It is the first book to provide a detailed insider's account
of the birth of the mountain bike, a machine that had numerous
fathers but was the product of a very particular time and place.
“Fat Tire Flyer” may not be about road bikes and Euro-style but
it is not just about a new technology coming to life. It is about
unforgettable characters, good friends, good times and having fun on
your bike. That is something all cyclists should be able to relate
to and enjoy.

Saturday, 8 November 2014

Michael Cotty and crew have a new project underway: the Col Collective. Highlighting many of Europe's greatest passes it will feature both a website and a YouTube channel. The website is not really up and running yet but several videos can be seen already, including this one of the Galibier in France. This is a monster of a climb, particularly if you get up to it after first riding the Col de Telegraphe as we did a few years ago.

The videos (introducing the Col Collective; the Galibier; the Stelvio) are beautifully photographed and there is nice accompanying music. Designed to inspire and prepare you for the climbs, the videos have already convinced me to try to get back over the winter into the climbing form I once had.

Here is a very charming video portrait, "At the Speed of Heart," of a master Italian framebuilder, a native of Modena (city of Ferrari, Maserati, Lamborghini, Pagani, excellent balsamic vinegar and Luciano Pavarotti) who clearly followed his own muse. Now 88 years old, Lino Messori is the kind of person that makes the bicycle world, or at least one part of it, so attractive to me. Enjoy!

Thursday, 6 November 2014

Here is a very charming little film, less than 3 minutes long, that came out last year (2013) on Vimeo. The filmmaker, Dean Saffron, only had an hour to conduct an interview followed by a mere 30 minutes to shoot the video! The protagonist is an Australian collector of bicycles, James McDonald. In the words of Mr. Saffron:

I simply had to make this video after meeting "James" a very enigmatic
man who has taken it upon himself to collect one bicycle from each
developmental epoch for future generations to enjoy , a kind of time
capsule if you will !
Hi Everybody ,sadly my friend James "The Spokesman" has passed away from lung cancer last week. (postscript added by the filmmaker in 2014)

There are some iconic bicycles in the video, from an 1816 Draisine replica to a fine highwheeler, a classic Dursley-Pedersen and even a Moulton. It is a shame that there was no opportunity for a longer video since the collection, which is probably dispersed by now, was superb.

Saturday, 1 November 2014

Racing ahead of Mark Cavendish's two
autobiographies, American/St.Kitts and Nevis pro cyclist Kathryn
Bertine, 37 years old, recently launched her third book. The first
covered her career as a figure skater with an ice dancing company;
the second was about her attempts to become an Olympic athlete in a
range of unlikely sports but
“The Road Less Taken” is a different book again, a series of
episodes in her life as a professional cyclist and journalist. In it
she travels not just a road less taken but one that leads in
surprising directions.

Kathryn Bertine appears to
be a Force of Nature. Following her ultimately unsuccessful (but
entertaining) attempt to get to the Beijing Olympics while writing
for ESPN, she discovered her true sports love was not triathlon or
rowing or distance swimming or pistol shooting but rather road
cycling and to make it happen she became a citizen of the tiny
Caribbean nation of St. Kitts and Nevis which she has since
represented at several World Road Championships. Having designed her
own national jersey. And arranged to get to various faraway
countries to race. With no money or team support or much of
anything, except an obvious unstoppable determination and more than a
little talent and passion.

She has been the national
champion of her adopted country several times and raced for a number
of women's professional teams, which gives her credible perspective,
and her degree in journalism gives her the skill to capture these
interesting stories in an elegant, personal style. She has become a
documentary filmmaker with “Half the Road,” an eloquent argument
for equality in women's cycling and sports in general. Her activism
on behalf of her gender saw her, with pro racers Marianne Vos (3-time
World Road Champion), Emma Pooley (former World Time Trial Champion)
and Chrissie Wellington (4-time Ironman World Champion), successfully
petition Tour de France organizers ASO to put on a women's race. La
Course was run in Paris on the Champs Elysée
this year, to the Arc de Triumph and back in 13 laps, covering 89
kilometres, on the final morning of the Tour de France before the
arrival of the men's teams. Kathryn Bertine, without a team,
received a last-minute invitation from Wiggle Honda and was able to
taste the triumph of participating in a women's pro race on the
grandest stage in cycling.

Kathryn Bertine racing at La Course, Paris, July 2014

But most of this is not
covered in “the Road Less Taken.” Instead the book, a series of
short essays, covers the topics of what life is like for pro women
cyclists (pretty marginal, it appears, although grimly funny in
parts); stupid UCI rules; women in sports; women in sports treated
unfairly; the stupid UCI and some of its idiotic rules; and stupid
airline baggage charges. There is a good account of how women manage
to get by financially in racing (barely, and holding down numerous
jobs) and an amusing riposte to Bicycling magazine's piece on
the hottest women in cycling who she names as “Watties” rather
than “Hotties” for their impressive athletic accomplishments
which seem secondary to their attractive appearances. (Although one
must admit that a lot of female cyclists look terrific and are great
advertisements for the fitness benefits of cycling. As calendar
models they would appeal far more than, say, the Schleck brothers.)

There is a thoughtful piece
on the Lance Armstrong legacy as well as some very personal stories
about friends and family of which “the Pinarello,” about a racing
bicycle hanging on a wall, its owner deceased, is most commendable.
Sad but beautifully written.

One of other essays that is
particularly enjoyable albeit alarming is entitled “On Taking”
about participating in a pre-Olympic race in Venezuela, seeking
elusive points. Assistance from the Venezuelan federation was
obtained using pantomime and the author was driven by a complete
stranger on a seven hour trip from Caracas to the hinterland:

“...the
roads were harrowing, twisty, and without lighting. Many South
American highways—Venezuela notwithstanding—are rather
frightening, as lane lines and stop signs appear to be nothing more
than decorative. Taillights are optional, and overtaking trucks by
crossing the double yellow line is a common practice. Adding to this
conundrum, the man driving me was texting, drowsy and constantly
misplacing his glasses. He also had early-onset Parkinson's.”

In spite of the awful hotel
and lack of food, she somehow psyched herself up enough to race like
a demon and in the end, although admitting to not being a big
sprinter, managed a sixth place finish and taking eight points
towards her dream of Olympic qualification. It is a glorious moment
in the book but soon after everything lands with thud as the UCI
rescinds all the points from the race and then fails to recognize her
St. Kitts and Nevis national champion points due to a clerical error.
The author is an ambitious and competitive athlete and the
disappointment is palpable. The Olympic dream is over.

But Kathryn Bertine has
accomplished a great deal following this different road, seemingly
through a combination of stubbornness and humour. As sympathetic as
one is to the undeniable arguments she makes in favour of women's
cycling we know that men racing in anything below UCI World Tour
level do not have roads paved with gold either but at least they have
a slate of races and some recognition, if not much money (see my recent review of Phil
Gaimon's “Pro Cycling on $10 a Day,”).
But the author has made the most out of the hand she has been dealt.
In her introduction she writes:

“I
also understood that this professional cycling goal wasn't a journey
of sport but a further expedition of a life less ordinary. One that
would chronicle five years of my mid-thirties, no less. Who, at 33,
chooses bicycles over babies? Highways over husbands? Carbon fiber
over fortuitous careers? No one, surely. That is, no one chooses.
It is simply who we are to heed our What-Ifs. And the call of the
What-If is hardly specific to athletes.”

Not everyone can win three
World Road Championships like Marianne Vos or four Ironman World
Championships like Chrissie Wellington but not everyone can look as
critically at one's own life as an athlete and what that means in
terms of pleasure gained, opportunities foregone and lesson learned
as Kathryn Bertine has done in “the Road Less Taken.” And with
the recent announcement of a three day women's race to run concurrent
to the Amgen Tour of California, perhaps for women cyclists there will
be a road more taken ahead.

“The Road Less Taken” by Kathryn
Bertine, with a foreword by Lindsay Berra

Kathryn Bertine is a remarkable
multitalent. In addition to having worked as a professional figure
skater, journalist, triathlete and pro road cyclist she has become a
strong voice in the call for greater visibility for women in sports.
It takes reckless courage for someone scraping by on the
less-than-poverty wages of a female bike racer to decide the best way
to promote her sport is by making a full-length documentary video
but, astonishingly, “Half the Road,” featuring an impressive cast
of athletes and experts, is the result and has been playing to packed
cinemas at special screenings throughout the United States and other
countries. What is remarkable is not so much whether it is good or
bad (and it is pretty good!) but that it exists at all.

In the modern age of global connections
there are novel ways of raising money and Ms. Bertine turned to
crowdfunding, pitching her passion for bike racing in May 2013 to the
world after a year of effort and working with cinematographer Kevin
Tokstad to get things launched. The campaign aimed to raise $65,000
and by close of the offer in July had squeaked by as 579 funders
pitched in $65,808 and Kathryn and modest team were off to the races.

The original goal of the project was
described in this way:

Half the Road
is a documentary film that explores the world of women’s
professional cycling, focusing on both the love of sport and the
pressing issues of inequality that modern-day female riders face in a
male dominated sport. With footage from some of the world’s best
international UCI races to interviews with Olympians, World
Champions, rookies, coaches, managers, officials, doctors and family
members, Half the Road offers a unique insight to the drive,
dedication, and passion it takes for female cyclists to thrive. Both
on and off the bike, the voices and advocates of women’s pro
cycling take their audience on a journey of enlightenment, depth,
strength, love, humor and best of all, change & growth.

It is apparent that this already
ambitious goal was eventually superceded by a another broader idea.
Kathryn Bertine wrote:

I began this documentary with the
assumption it was about women’s professional cycling. A few months
in, I realized the film was about equality and society, as told
through the medium of cyclists. Half The Road is my hope that someday
the whole world will see sports not as “men’s” or “women’s”
but as equal athletes on equal playing fields.

There is a lot of wonderful material in
this video. We see some exciting bike racing and have the
opportunity to hear an impressive selection of women athletes talk
about their careers and, often, the struggle to make ends meet, let
alone get recognition. One cannot help but be impressed by racer
Nichole Wangsgard, a university professor with a Ph.D, who had to
keep her racing secret from her employers, and dealing with with must
have been a very difficult situation in being part of a gay couple in
Utah. Many of women cycling's star riders have their turn in front
of the camera including the Netherland's Marianne Vos (three time
former World Road Champion) who is one of the few to be a genuine
sports celebrity in her home country and Kristin Armstrong, who came
back from having a child to win the rainbow jersey in the time trial.
It is an indication of how tough things are for women that
Armstrong, winner of two Olympic gold medals and twice World Time
Trial Champion, is usually confused with Lance Armstrong's wife of
the same name when mentioned at all. Many of the cyclists are
probably known to fans of women's pro racing but barely to the
greater universe of fans of men's racing and pretty much invisible to
the sports world beyond that. These women train hard, race hard and
put on a good show on the road. Why is their sport in the state it
find itself in?

Kathryn Bertine points an accusatory
finger (well, more like waves a clenched fist) in the direction of
several culprits. The Union Cycliste International (UCI) is the
sport's governing body. It has historically shown no interest in the
women's side of the sport except to invoke ridiculous rules such as
the one limiting the average age of women pros on a team. This rule,
which certainly would be detrimental to someone like Ms. Bertine who
is in her 30s, is stupid and the point is made. Not once but several
times.

And this is the major drawback to this
film, otherwise commendable in so many ways. It obviously comes with
a message but rather than simply leaving the women to tell their
often compelling stories the producers add too much to underscore the
message that there is inequality out there. Poor Brian Cookson,
elected to reform the UCI in 2013, looks rather gormless as he is
shown looking uncomfortable while lamely suggesting that women might
be “weaker.” This is a “Gotcha!” moment. Cookson was the
key figure in the revival of near-bankrupt British Cycling, which has
had terrific success not only in men's racing but also seen a
generation of fine women competitors develop. The UCI, it is
revealed at the end of the film, has dropped the average age rule for
women's teams and this too weakens the message.

The other culprits besides the UCI are
race organizers who do not give opportunities to women to compete and
take advantage of the infrastructure established for men's events.
This is a fair enough suggestion but, playing the Devil's Advocate
here,(disclaimer: I was one of those 579 funders of this video) it is
not clear how this would work in an era when even the men's races
struggle for financial support. For example, after disillusionment
set in following revelations about Jan Ullrich, Germany went from
three top-level men's teams to none and lost most of its top-level
races, with only the dreadfully boring Cyclassics in Hamburg still on
the UCI World Tour. The United States, where bike racing remains a
marginal sport at best, was once host to stage races like the Tour
DuPont and the Tour of Georgia but the highest visibility event
remains the Amgen Tour of California which, while not on the UCI
World Tour, still draws top racers from Europe. And the structure of
men's racing is far deeper, with the World Tour at the top with “farm
teams” at the UCI Pro Continental and UCI Continental levels below.
In 2014 there was a total of 32 teams in the single UCI Women's
Teams division. Of course one reason there might be comparatively
few women is the sparse selection of races: in the UCI Women's World
Cup in 2006 there were 12 races; in 2014 only 9.

The difficult situation that women's
pro cycling finds itself in is tough enough but the filmmakers
brought in the issue of inequality in women's sports as a whole.
There is a bit too much coverage devoted to the belief that once upon
a time that women were simply too weak/ladylike/modest to compete it
the rough-and-tumble world of competition. There is an interview
with the remarkable Kathrine Switzer, who entered the 1967 Boston
Marathon when women were not allowed to do so and roused the ire of
officials. A great story but women have been allowed to run
marathons (Switzer won the women's class at the 1974 New York
Marathon) for four decades so there is not really an issue there as
Kathryn Bertine is arguing, it appears, that women should have bike
races that parallel men's events rather than unisex ones. And this
brings us to the unspoken question of why women's sports, with the
possible exception of tennis and golf, have never managed to achieve
the financial status or visibility of any men's sports. As to team
sports, of which cycling is one, there are no women's sports
approaching the level of men's at all. The FIFA Women's World Cup,
to be played in Canada in 2015, will see many teams competing with
players who are only semi-pros or amateurs as there is no money
either in what is for men the most popular sport in the world.

The third theme that enters the story
is Kathryn Bertine's own attempts to obtain a berth at the 2012
London Olympics in women's road racing and while this underscores how
difficult it is for small nations to compete (Bertine rides for the
Caribbean islands of St. Kitts and Nevis) this parallels the problems
that poorly-funded teams just can't compete with ones rolling in
dough. This is a problem not just for small nations or women's teams
but appears throughout sports and while it is an issue for
consideration it burdens this documentary, muddying the message by
just piling on too much in the 106 minutes of running time. The
video would benefit from a more focused story but it is
understandable that a first-time director, with no video experience
at all, would be enthralled by so much excellent footage that
punchier editing would fall a bit by the wayside.

But forget the nitpicking since “Half
the Road” is valuable for exposing us to some great athletes and
interesting people we would never get to know if we had to wait
around for a major network or pay-channel to provide some exposure.
With the Amgen Tour adding a three day women's event in its next
edition and this year's successful La Course at the Tour de France in
Paris we might be seeing a light at the end of a long, dark tunnel
that is opportunity in women's sports. There is much food for
thought here, if not many proffered solutions.

Returning to the director's words, her
goals are truly worthwhile and she must be commended on what must
have been a very difficult project to complete within a budget that
represents three or four of Team Sky's Pinarellos:

I wondered if any other female pro
cyclists might talk to me about their obstacles, their ambition, and
their unconditional love for a sport that was often thankless, cruel,
and unresponsive to change. What is the true joy of cycling,
and how do we fix the wrongs? I’ve always considered “sport”
a euphemism for “society”– I believe by changing one, we affect
the other.

“Half the Road” is available as a download at iTunes or as a
DVD directly from the producers at www.halftheroad.com
for the nominal sum of $18.71. Even better, head out to one of the
screenings and show your support for women's sports as well. A list
of these events as also at the Half the Road website.

Your Humble Wheelman

After I cycled from London to Munich at 18 years of age, I decided I always wanted cycling to be a part of my life. It is a pastime that lets you get fit, see the world at your own pace, enjoy exotic machinery and make new friends.
You can contact me at l_reissner@hotmail.com